by Bob Carson

Editor’s Note: The USTA website is pleased to present freelance writer Bob Carson and his popular “Outside the Box” features. This monthly series is a menu of outlandish proposals presented with a wink — but the purpose behind them is serious. The views contained in this column are that of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of the United States Trotting Association.

“You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you’re making those connections with your audience then they’re going to go right along with it.” — Bruce Springsteen

Bob Carson

The future of harness racing is right in front of you.

The screen you are looking at, or more likely an I-pad-like device, will be the conduit that connects our sport with the rest of the world. With a tap of your finger, horse races will leap onto 3-D, flat screens with surround sound. The physical experience of being close to the action is terrific, but it will continue to fall from favor because we can watch, wager, research and root around our refrigerators without the inconvenience and expense of a trek to the racetrack.

If harness racing is to be a viable digital player, we need to step up our presentation game. We need to realize how important production values will be if we are to compete — and there is a lot of competition available with a click of that mouse beneath your index finger.

Autumn Ryan graphic

Each day, harness racing squanders precious opportunities to lure new fans. Silence is not golden in the entertainment world…it’s simply a waste of time that could be used for pushing and promoting our product.

Check out the results of this shocking experiment. I took out a stopwatch and logged onto my computer to watch a race at one of our top racetracks. Here is the actual audio transcript:

Announcer recaps the order of finish, and then says, “Next post is in 14 minutes.”

Minute 1 – silence

Minute 2 – silence

Minute 3 – “Here is the official order of finish and your payoffs.”

Minute 4 – replay of race (no audio)

Minute 5 – silence

Minute 6 – silence

Minute 7 – silence

Minute 8 – silence

Minute 9 – Bugle horn, then, “Here are your trotters, for race two. Number one is…”

Minute 10 – silence

Minute 11 – silence

Minute 12 – “The gate is rolling.”

Minute 13 – silence

Minute 14 – “And they are off…”

This may not be completely accurate because I dozed off a couple of times. However, my math shows 59 seconds of actual speaking by someone as enthusiastic as a person calling numbers in a DMV line. The visual presentation was horses circling and numbers. The entertainment value was less than a bread sandwich.

This must not stand. Our sport just wasted precious minutes. The viewers learned nothing. They were not entertained. Listeners were told what they knew. There were long segments of dead air. There was no subliminal music (a tremendously important facet of any presentation). There was no controversy, opinion, bold predictions, surprises, debate, dialogue, confrontation, trivia, danger or history.

The motivators of the modern viewer were AWOL.

It’s an entertainment jungle out there. We are bombarded with statistics that tell us there is a shockingly small supply of time in the world.

• “You have less than eight seconds to catch a Web visitor’s attention.”
• “The average person is bombarded with over 5,000 commercial messages a day.”
• “Today’s multitasking Millennials can do up to 10 things simultaneously.”
• “You have to do something surprising every nine minutes during a presentation to keep the audience.”

Hillbilly Hand Fishing, Opening Storage Lockers, Ice Road Truckers, Crab Fishing, Fear Factor, Jersey Housewives, Weight Loss, Temptation Island, Poker, Celebrity Apprentice…have all found homes on cable television. Harness horse racing, a real sport with gambling, has no home.

Obviously, the product is often less important than the presentation. Many of these shows do not even have a product — they are all presentation. If a group of media manipulators can sit in a room and take, oh say, footage of people who hoard junk in their basement, then add bells and whistles to hook viewers, the leap to make harness racing a viable entertainment should not be too far fetched.

Let’s get back to the audio feed in our experiment. A study this season looked at every major NFL announcing outfit and counted how many words-per-minute the play-by-play and color men spoke. Kevin Harlan and Solomon Wilcots amassed an average of 189.2 words per minute. NBC’s Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth, the preeminent present-day announcer team, were the quietest at 137.33 words per minute. With the long segments of “dead air” in our harness racing example, the words-per-minute numbers would barely register in this study.

Lest we paint with too broad a brush, some harness racing shows are on the right track. Among them, the Meadowlands and the Meadows do a nice job of keeping the verbal ball rolling. Still, there is room for improvement across the board, primarily in eliminating the obvious information and ratcheting up the entertainment.

Gamblers, especially hard-core gamblers, should not be the target of announcers. The flock has already found our game. These serious players do not need a show. Serious players know which horses are in a race and what the odds are. They can, and will, hit the mute button if the audio feed is more of a distraction than a tool.

The real win, place and show of the audio feed should be entertainment for the casual visitor, or the new visitor, or anyone with a pulse who logs onto a harness racing feed. These are the people we are fishing for; these are the people who need a show. A show is not a recitation of post positions, odds and a race call.

Take a look at what draws eyes. It is not, nor has it ever been, overly-intellectual. Drama, real or faux, is what feeds the beast.

Entertainment 101 is to keep moving, tell us what we don’t know, surprise us. Focus on controversial issues and personalities. If you are not enthusiastic, fake it. If the upcoming race is not breathlessly important to you, it will not be to your viewer (bless guys like Roger Huston who make each race the Hambletonian).

Should our announcers, and believe me we have a great bunch, feel silly entertaining rather than reading the program and calling the race? Hopefully not, especially if they and their employers realize it is good business. Will they feel a little silly working a monotonous gig in front of an empty house? The best rock and roll performance I ever saw was by a 63-year-old veteran rocker who performed for eight people on a snowy night in a dingy bar in Columbus, Ohio. He played his heart out all night long — because he was a pro. Popular commentators/entertainers were once AM radio nobodies that found a way to draw listeners.

So what could harness race announcers talk about? Everything. Find what works and hammer it. Here are a few specific starting points.

Ask owners to e-mail information about their horses to you. Create a data base for every horse and owner. Have all sorts of information at your fingertips…why did you buy this horse, where did you buy it, who is involved, what are are the quirks of the horse, what physical problems, what are the high and low points, how much did you pay, peripheral stories, why the name, what is your occupation, humorous episodes, sad episodes, etc. etc. etc.

Announcers and co-hosts should have a treasure trove of new material they can mine through and pick out new jewels every time. Your job is not merely to call races — it is to energize our casual fans and grab new fans. A few have this gift. Hey, Charlie Sheen is not Olivier, but put him behind the microphone as a color commentator at Buffalo Raceway and people will find him. Glen Beck is not Socrates, but put him behind the microphone of Maywood Park, somehow, he will build a following. Oprah may not know a trotter from a tutu, but if she was behind the microphone at Northfield for 20 years, somehow, some way, she would have brought eyes and ears to her and her gig.

Another idea is to bring people in as guests, lots of people. Why? Because people find other people interesting. Guests may prove to be duds, they may prove to be diamonds, but every new face is, at least for the first few minutes, a small drama. You could bring vendors, grooms, car salesmen, your ex-wife, politicos, strippers, homeless people, CEO’s, CPA’s, or MIA’s. If the guest knows about our game — you talk racing. If they know nothing — teach them while you talk.

Say a racetrack runs 150 programs per year. Should they hustle up a “guest announcer” for each program, this has more reverberations than you may imagine. Each guest has friends, relatives, and creditors — let’s say a hundred. Today they can get the word out quickly via social networking that they are going to be a “guest host” on such and such day. They will self-promote their appearance. Repeat this daily, that’s 15,000 potential new log ins.

Yeah, its work…Yeah, it’s a hassle…Entertainment is hard work from the inside.

The relative value of harness racing, how it plays in today’s world, is subject to debate. Rest assured. We are much better entertainment than the vast majority of options. Still, being good doesn’t mean Bo Diddley. The survivors will be determined by money, the money will be determined by attention, getting attention in a world of tablets and tabloids will be determined by us.

Next month, in a follow-up to this column, you will read how every racetrack can immediately bring $1,000 to their daily handle and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new visitors to each race program at no cost. It will be a dead certain, mortal lock.